The Key is FALLING. Look, I don't want people to get confussed with all this.

It doesn't matter what stance you use, Dempseys drill is just a drill to caputure the effect in a step. Once you get it it can be done anywhere....It is a way to generate the momentum from body weight. Once you can generate it, then you got to put it into your hit.

Try this one ('cept you Jonnhy).

Stand normal. Pull both feet up off the ground, really fast, without hopping.

Now, if you noticed, to do that your feet had to move up off the ground at a rate faster then your body moved down. You did this by bending the knees.

For punching, you must learn to time it so your feet stay on the ground, but support NO WEIGHT. It still involves "lifting" the feet by bending the knees, but only at the rate at which you fall. Thus, the feet do not lift off the ground, but they do not support weight either.

Now you have momentum, and can redirct that out into a hit, with the mechanics of your punch. This is why the feet need to touch the ground at the point of impact for many types of punches, as it requires that point of leverage to redirect the energy from moving down to moving out. curved or arcing attacks, or attacks on the same side as the stepping foot are some examples here.

Dempsey Step is a straight hit. As you lift the foot to fall, the rear leg pushes the fall forward like a hinge, and the calf spring kicks in to launch you forward. So the momentum is allready being redirected from down to forward, via the legs and step. The rear foot also provides the anchor point to stabilize the hit, allowing the front foot to still be off the ground on contact (right handed hit, right foot back). The Stomp then provides even more push on the landing from the ground up. All together the falling generates the energy, the step sends it forward (via the push of the rear leg), and the stomp insures all the energy goes back up into the target. But you don't NEED the stomp on a straight hit.

The stomp also is the result of the rapid effort of the front foot to maintain height, to push you back up into stance after the hit.

o ya, great article KOTO RYU

"If anything is gained from this, it should be you both wanting to get better so you can make up for how crappy you are now." KidSpatula about the Sirc vs DTT Gong Sau Event

From the semi-crouch however, you don't need to bring your foot up that far at all. It becomes more of a simple step than a stomping one.

what really? Crazy.

Next you'll be telling us dempsy didn't know a proper pidgeon toe and sometimes neglected to tuck his chin.

Then, you might even go so far into heresy as to assert that dempsy didn't have to worry about shoots or low kicks!

Then to complete your descent into madness you might imply that people continued to box after dempsy's passing!

DTT, I doubt I hit harder then dempsy, but I know if the three of us hand a contest, you'd get the bronze, you shameful little chunner.

If you train falling power right, your feet need never leave the ground except to advance normally - normal footwork as incorporated into hitting provides enough opportunity for falling power.

It is better to train this from the begining so you never have to "unlearn" artificially raising your lead leg and sacrificing other elements of geometry.

And you do not, repeat DO NOT stomp to send energy back up into the target. It actually compromises your falling power again. It doesn't have to be a loud hard stomp at all, either. You're doing it to build the next hit by getting your weight where it needs to be for your next step. Sorry...

Last edited by JohnnyCache; 5/21/2006 8:07pm at .

There's no choice but to confront you, to engage you, to erase you. I've gone to great lengths to expand my threshold of pain. I will use my mistakes against you. There's no other choice.

Boxers call this the "falling step", and with practice this will give you the feeling of what it's like to get your whole body behind your strikes. Your legs help drive forward your strike like a snake striking out at its target. Stepping with your weight is the same idea as the shift, which is simply changing your stance so that whatever arm you are punching with (let's say a right straight), you are changing into a right forward stance at the same time. So essentially, if you're in a left lead stance, when you threw your straight right, you would take a step similar to the one above with your RIGHT foot, so that your right foot touches the ground at almost the same time your fist hits your opponent. There are some martial arts styles which practice this concept already (taijutsu is one, some Chinese forms may have this too), but unfortunately too many concentrate on the shifting itself and not the idea that you don't have to use those long lunging punches in an actual fight: they're used to first show you the fundamentals of a punch, then from there you have to tighten them up and adjust them to your own body. And no, to throw a powerful punch you do not need to take huge lumbering steps. Professional boxers can throw punches with knockout force with a step of only a few inches, and their steps themselves are often quite subtle and difficult to detect.

(EDIT: Added 02/28/06) There's a great drill for practicing the falling step that you can do either by yourself or with a partner. Get in your regular fighting stance in front of either a heavy bag or your partner holding a pad. Practice stepping forward and "falling" into your target with just your shoulder to start. This gives you the feeling of what it's like to utilize the falling step against a solid object. After doing this several times, now try pushing it with two hands, timing your push with your step. I like to imagine a line that connects my elbows to my knees so that as soon as your knees move, your elbows should too. You can then use just one hand for pushing as before, and then finally work on your punching. This is a great drill for learning proper weight transfer.

From the semi-crouch however, you don't need to bring your foot up that far at all. It becomes more of a simple step than a stomping one.

Agreed. Dempsey was also in full agreement with the idea that the falling step should be integrated with normal footwork. (That said, his "normal" isn't everyone's "normal" -- he carried the majority of his weight on the forward leg.) The ideal is probably for the leg lift and weight drop to cancel such that the foot just slides forward at a constant height just slightly above the ground.